Mom's White Bread

This is the recipe my mom used to use for bread before she switched to whole wheat bread. I don't have a wheat grinder, so I just make this fluffy white stuff and pretend it's just as good for me as the whole wheat kind. It's SO yummy, and really not that hard to make. 

What you need:
2 cups hot water (it can be pretty hot, as long as you can hold your hand in the water for a few seconds, you know it's not hot enough to kill the yeast)
1 TBS active dry yeast
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup sugar
5-7 cups flour

What you do:
*In a large bowl, combine the water, yeast, salt, shortening, sugar, and 1 cup of flour. Mix this fairly well (you'll probably still have lumps of shortening, don't worry about them, they'll get dealt with later), then leave it to rest for about 10 minutes.
*Add in the flour, one cup at a time, mixing well after each cup is added. Keep adding cups of flour until the dough gets too thick to stir in any more. If you are using a hand held mixer, you will probably have to switch to an old fashioned stirring spoon to get enough flour into your dough for it to be workable.
*Dump the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 5-8 minutes, or until the dough cleans the table and is nice and springy. Dribble just a bit of oil in the mixing bowl, then place your ball of dough back in the bowl, turning once to coat all sides with the oil.
*Let rise is a warm place until dough has doubled in size, about an hour. Divide your dough into 2 pieces and shape into loaves. Place in greased loaf pans and allow to rise until doubled in size.
*Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until it's golden brown on top and sounds hollow when you take it out of the pan and thump on the bottom. Remove from pans and let cool on wire rack. When the bread is completely cool, store in plastic bags.