Grandmommy's Homemade White Bread

This is a family recipe that has been around for at least 4 generations. We love this bread, especially when it's warm right out of the oven and smothered with butter and homemade jam.

Grandmommy's Bread

6 cup hot water (not too hot or you'll kill the yeast)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 Tbl salt
6 Tbl sugar
2 Tbl yeast (I used rapid rise yeast)
5 lbs flour (I used bread flour. All purpose will work, your bread will just be more dense than if you used bread flour.)

Place yeast in 1 cup of hot water with 1 Tbl sugar to activate for about 5-10 minutes. Combine wet ingredients, salt and remaining sugar. Gradually add flour until the dough pulls away from the side of bowl. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead, adding flour as needed to keep dough from becoming sticky. Place 1-2 Tbl oil in the bottom of a large bowl. Coat dough in oil and cover to let rise until doubled. I like to put my oven on "warm" or the lowest setting to heat up, then turn the heat off and put bowl in oven to help dough rise better and faster. Once doubled, punch dough down to deflate and let rise again until doubled. After it's done rising, split the dough into 4 equal portions and shape to fit bread loaf pans. (You may be able to get 5 loaves out of the recipe, depending on how well your dough rises. I halved it and had a little too much dough- hence the bulging loaf in my picture on the right) Let rise about 20-25 minutes in pans and then bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes. Turn bread out of pans onto wire rack to cool. For a softer and yummier crust, brush the tops of your loaves with butter.