Devil's advocate here. Your MIL might have been onto something if your starter was super active and your kitchen was like 78-80 degrees. Two hours can work for a high-ratio starter in a warm room with lower hydration dough. I've accidentally let a batch go 5 hours in a hot kitchen and ended up with a sticky, overproofed mess that collapsed in the oven. The real trick is watching for that domed, jiggly top and a few bubbles, not just the clock. But yeah, your specific recipe probably needed way more time, so it's a balancing act.

Yeah the cheap stuff is usually a urethane based tape and it just doesn't bond with the pad fibers like the good latex backed tape does. Live and learn on that one I guess.

Had a buddy do the same thing and his tree died anyway two years later.

I did that to my own lavender once, never made that mistake again.

Wait, you're telling me line breaks were the problem? Like the actual line break characters that every text editor hides by default? That's brutal, I would have been pulling my hair out for way longer than three hours before even thinking to check something that basic.