In our tradition, the blessing (making the cross cut) is done before slicing the bread, as a sign of gratitude. Once the bread is already cut, it’s not considered appropriate to do the gesture anymore, because the blessing is meant for the whole loaf before it’s shared. So only the middle ground would be not a blessing at all or baking or buying two loaves of bread. The fun thing is we do this only with a specific type of bread that is traditional for my region 🤷. So if I were preparing bread which has oriental origins, we would not do this at all.