A Lump of Bread

So our oven has been broken for weeks now.
Yesterday I finally remembered that I have a bread machine that we got for our wedding.
I've never used it because when I planned to a few years back I couldn't find one of the parts.

I have since found it though, so I attempted to make some bread yesterday. I followed the directions precisely and after four hours of waiting it finally heated up, without using any of those previous hours to actually knead the ingredients. They were all sitting in there exactly as I had placed them in. Yet the machine was starting to get hot in order to cook my unmixed ingredients.

Needless to say I was rather perturbed and tried to stop it which had no effect, so I unplugged it and went through the process of re-reading the manual again and trying to find a solution online, all to no avail!

Finally in exasperation (it didn't help my six year old was whining at me that she was so disappointed that we didn't have any bread yet.) I upturned the bread pan onto the counter and kneaded it by hand. No easy task since it had been sitting still for four hours and the sugar and wet ingredients had melted into a sticky mass underneath all of the flour. I attempted to let the now kneaded dough rise on the counter for a few hours but by 9pm I was done with waiting and threw the solid lump of dough back into the machine and plugged it in.

When I had unplugged it previously in an attempt to start over and see if it would knead the dough the second time, it had made no difference and plugging it back in at that point only showed that it had the same amount of time on the timer and was still heating up. I guess it just hadn't been unplugged long enough before because when I replugged it in after working the dough by hand and attempting to let it rise the whole process started over and the timer said it would take another four hours!

I washed my hands of it both literally and otherwise and went to bed, only to be awakened about 4 hours later to the sound of the machine beeping that it was done.  I ignored it for a while, but eventually I dragged myself out of bed, extracted the pan from the machine, unplugged it and went back to bed.

Hours later we awakened to find a solid mass of wheat something in the pan. It looked just like the lump of dough I'd put in the pan the night before, except cooked, I guess.
It was edible when toasted and buttered, but not exactly delectable.

I think it's possible there was also something wrong with my yeast, but considering how long it sat in a bunch of flour before it ever coming in contact with sugar and or water, it's hard to be sure. At any rate, the machine appears to be defective. Sad that it took me over eight years to find out one of my wedding gifts is useless huh? So let this be a lesson to you newly weds out there. If you're keeping it, you'd better use it within the first year. Well, I guess we all make mistakes, eh?