It does have a crust setting and I did have it set to light. While the crust is definitely light in color, it's still thick and chewy. I know it was like that in the bread machine my parents had when I was growing up, so maybe that's just an aspect of bread machine cooking.
The yeast I have is actually in a little jar, rather than separate little packs. Is that what people mean by buying in bulk, or do they mean *big* jars or something? It's a little bigger than a baby food jar in size.
My husband also suggested that, if this really works and I'm doing it regularly, we could get a few more bread machines. Then I could do a lot of batches at once.
Anyway, I'm currently doing a 1.5 pound loaf. I hope it works! It's been a bit... interesting. I made the dough in the machine last night, but it was too late to cook it. So even though it had risen in the machine, I set it up in the bread pan and put it in a warm but off oven to rise overnight. Well, it rose, but it really liked one side of the bread pan, so it sort of overflowed over that side! So I had to scoop it back in, as it was hanging on the side of the pan and wouldn't have cooked well, but then I lost the benefit of the rising. So this morning I fixed it *back* up in the bread pan and am trying to get it to rise just enough to bake but not so much that it overflows everywhere. I am not really sure how well this will work... it will have risen three times! Is that bad? Next time I'll make it during the day and keep an eye on it so it doesn't overflow to begin with. I'm going to try the "turn the oven off halfway" technique when I bake it to see how that works.