Zip ties are the duct tape of the electrical world, cheap and easy until they bite you in the ass. Chasing a ground fault through 40 feet of snug conduit sounds like a special kind of hell, all because somebody wanted it to look pretty. The old crusty guys always know, we just gotta eat crow long enough to figure it out.

Parchment works but it's not really about skipping the grease. The paper just gives the loaf nothing to grab onto, so it slides right out. You can still grease the pan under the paper if you want, but yeah, the paper is doing the work either way.

Same thing happened to me with my mom's angel food cake pan. I was doing the butter and flour thing for years and my cakes would tear every single time I flipped them. Switched to the spray about two years ago and now they drop right out, not even a crumb left behind. My wife thought I was crazy for changing something that "worked" but she stopped complaining once she saw the results. The flour dusting was actually making things worse because it left a dry layer that stuck to the cake. Spray is just easier and it covers all the little corners of a bundt pan way better than my fingers ever could.