Wiping, setting up old MacBook for a new owner: Problem encountered

I've followed all the steps on the page below for wiping and setting up my old 2011 MacBook Pro to give to a needy friend.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065

After doing all the preliminaries (sign-outs, NVRAM reset, etc,), I shut it down then started up in Recovery Mode (Option + R), but instead of seeing the utilities window I expected (so I could erase my startup disk), what appeared was the Language Selection page you see when you're setting up a new OS/computer. Any idea what's going on and how to proceed from here. (Right now, I've just shut the computer down.) THANK YOU!