Yeah fair. I don’t have many options here, unless I want to pay 2-3x as much as a normal grocery (and I think probably zero options that don’t donate to conservative shit, realistically). We only have piggly wiggly locally, and those are so freakin expensive for almost everything (probably because they know they have a truly captive market in the people who can’t go that far, and everyone else is pushed there by sheer distance to the next option - if you run out of sugar, you’ll pay the extra $2 to save an entire hour) The closest real grocery store is 20 min by highway, and it’s also not very good.

I’ll keep that window trick in mind, thanks! Won’t work for baked-in-situ, since that’s all timer based, but I’m thinking that’s the full source of the failures anyway (it rises, but it’s pretty dense and then collapses a bit. My slices no longer look like Batman, but they still fall a half inch or so during baking.. I’ve had to tone down the yeast, which alters the flavor and texture I’m sure)

Anyway, it’s cheap enough that I don’t mind trying a thousand iterations to find the lazy method that works, even if that does include just using the dough setting and transferring to my silicone bread pans. It’s fully edible, great for croutons, it’s just dense and a bit overly sweet most of the time. I wish I had the brain for fully hand-made bread, but I’d never remember to do the next steps on time to have it turn out properly.