The Easiest Bread To Make Your Infant or Toddler
Cottage cheese had a viral moment(um) in 2023 and 2024, due in no small part to its sheer versatility: you can use it in smoothies, desserts, even stews and soups. People made bread with it; people really made flatbread with it. It’s everywhere; it’s in everything. We should know: we’ve got pancake recipes with it, eggs recipes with it, muffins with it, oatmeal with it, curries with it …
…and now flatbread, too. What is the TikTok trend of summer ‘24 is doing on a site dedicated to cooking for infants and toddlers, you ask? I get it: the alignment seems shallow at best, suspect at worst. But the dish is ideally suited for infants and toddlers: remarkably easy to eat, loaded with protein and vitamins, and a blank canvas to do with as you please–pizza, sandwiches, serve plain, etc. It just needs an upgrade, because in its viral form it’s just an overcooked cheese omelet in need of–well, the “-bread” part. Which we’ve done here, giving it a bit more puff and constitution: more chew, better handling in wee ones’ hands, a more stable vehicle for dipping or topping. Now it works for everyone.
- 1 large Egg
- 5 oz Cottage Cheese (roughly the size of an individual container or serving)
- 1 small Avocado (or half of a large one)
- 1 spoonful Chickpea Flour (All-Purpose Flour fine, too)
- 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
- Everything Bagel seasoning
- Preheat oven to 400.
- In a blender, add the egg, cottage cheese, and innards of the avocado; blend until cottage cheese and avocado are broken down and integrated into liquid. Add in a heaping spoonful of the chickpea flour, the baking powder, and a couple of shakes from your Everything Bagel seasoning jar; then mix again until smooth.
- Cover a flat baking pan with parchment paper. Spoon the size/amount of batter you want onto the parchment paper, using the back of the spoon to spread the mixture out to the shape you desire. (You want the layer of batter to be thin all-around but not so thin that you can see the parchment paper underneath.) Repeat with remaining batter.
Cook until the flatbread can easily be peeled off the parchment, roughly 20 minutes.
This will depend entirely on both the size of the pieces you made and your purpose for making. If you made cracker- or individual-sized pieces, your child should be able to manage the piece on his/her own without the need for cutting it up; if you made larger/longer pieces, or if you topped it with several ingredients–say, for pizza–it’s probably best to slice into multiple pieces. Offer a favorite dip or condiment and let ‘em have at it.
If you plan on cooking or finishing add-ons atop the flatbread–again, say, pizza or our lahmacun recipe–put them on top of the flatbread at roughly the 16-minute mark so that both the flatbread and the additional ingredients can finish cooking simultaneously.
Brad (the Dad) is the founder and Chief Recipe Officer of New Dad's Kitchen. His own cooking/feeding journey started humbly during his son's infancy, preparing and managing his son's bottle intake in order to support his wife; it has since blossomed into a full-on passion to feed his child and family delicious and healthy meals that can satisfy both a toddler and his very tired parents.
