Slicing the August 19 crossword

[Thomps2525]

How often do you hear someone tout a new product as "the greatest thing since sliced bread"? Probably quite often. I can think of thousands of things that are greater than sliced bread, such as computers, televisions, microwave ovens, jet airliners, videotape, CDs, DVDs, pacemakers,cell phones, fiber optics and communications satellites. Anyway, the theme of today's crossword by Julian Kwan – her third published puzzle – is SLICEDBREAD ("'Best thing' bakery metaphor") and the names of four kinds of bread are neatly "sliced," appearing in circled letters within pairs of answers:

"Data-intensive branch of engineering" and "'Positively Entertaining' TV network": INFORMATICS■ION
"God, in Judaism" and "Red-handed": YAHWEH■INTHEACT
"Camaraderie" and "Avant-garde music genre": RAPPORT■ARTROCK
"Winter hike footwear item" and "Insect-sized superhero": SNOWSHOE■ANTMAN

RAISIN, WHITE, POTATO and WHEAT. Commercially-produced sliced bread has been around since July 6, 1928, when Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri began using an automatic slicing machine invented by Otto Rohwedder, a friend of bakery owner Frank Bench. In 1930, Wonder Bread became the first major bakery to sell sliced bread nationally. For a more detailed history:

https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-sliced-bread

Today's puzzle included several way-overused words: AGE, ALAS, APNEA, EEL, EGO, ETA, IMP, MRS, OWE and SEC.  "___ luego" is HASTA, which is not used in English. "De-creases" was a clever clue for IRONS.

I am going to refrain from making one of my usual half-baked puns.

Oops.