What about food textures? - Healthy Eating for Babies Age 6-12 Months

At about six months offer your baby foods with a variety of soft textures, which can be smooth or lumpy. Also offer soft finger foods.

Some foods already have a soft texture, such as infant cereal and ripe banana. Soft textures also include foods which are cooked and:

Tips:

Use a knife and fork, food processor, food mill or potato masher to create the right texture. Moisten food with liquid as needed. For the liquid you can use breastmilk or water. Change the food texture from smooth to lumpier as your baby learns to eat each new texture.
Do not worry about how many teeth your baby has before you introduce new textures. Babies do not need teeth to chew and eat soft foods.
Offering foods that are pureed, mashed, ground or cut into very small pieces, on a spoon, as well as soft finger foods, helps your baby learn to eat different textures. It also helps them learn to feed themselves.

These include foods that are mashed, ground, or cut into very small pieces, and finger foods. These foods help your baby learn to bite, chew, and move food around the mouth.
If you offer your baby pureed foods, offer them just for the first few weeks.
If your baby doesn’t try lumpy textures until after nine months of age, they may develop problems with trying new foods as they get older.
By 12 months of age, your baby should be eating a variety of tender family foods with the textures changed to suit your baby, such as ground, mashed, or chopped foods.

Giving your baby textures that they are not ready for (such as hard or chewy) could cause choking.

For safety reasons, there are some food shapes and textures that should not be offered to children younger than four years. See the section “Food Choking Hazards”.

For more information, see the video Making food for your baby