Challah = nonstop bread eating

Yesterday I made a loaf of challah for the first time from my trusted recipe source, smittenkitchen.com. And it turned out very tasty. Just a little sweet, moist, and tender. I've never actually eaten challah before, so I'm no expert on what it should be like, but it is damn tasty.
I halved the recipe, substituted 1/4 of the flour for whole wheat flour and threw in a few spoonfuls of vital wheat gluten. I feel too guilty making bread with 100% white, though I admit, that fraction of whole wheat flour by no means renders it "healthy." Also, instead of using 2 eggs and 1 yolk, I substituted about a teaspoon of butter for the extra yolk. It's a pretty insignificant amount, but butter makes everything better, right?
Anyways, I didn't braid it, having very little counter space here, but I did do the egg wash. Usually I consider that kind of thing frivolous and ignore it, but I have no regrets about this as it came out of the oven so pretty.
I've been basically stuffing my face with this bread at every opportunity: Some for breakfast, some while studying, some around lunchtime, some more while studying, a slice before the gym, a slice after the gym, and a slice while studying some more. Geez. I really ate a lot of bread today. I'm cutting myself off for the rest of the evening.
I'd offer a picture, but now there is less than a quarter of the original loaf left. My roommate sheepishly admitted to cutting off a slice this morning. I usually strongly encourage sharing, since more carbs for other people means less for me, and plus, it means other people like your baking, but this time I felt slightly begrudging about sharing.
Conclusion: studying with a kitchen nearby is bad news. Especially when there's a fresh loaf of bread sitting in there. But! Challah is good stuff.

The solution to dense bread

I made 2 loaves in the last few days, one being a Bread Without a Timetable and another the Dill bread, both from Smitten Kitchen. Both turned out pretty good, but somehow really dense.

I figure it's 2 things:
1. My house is not warm. The dough takes more than twice as long to double in size. With the dill bread, it was more like 6 hours compared to the 1.5 to 2 suggested in the recipe. After 2 hours on the counter, it looked almost exactly the same! So I turned on the oven to "warm" for a couple minutes, stuck the bowl of dough in and shut it off, then left it for the rest of the afternoon. It looked great after that.
I did the same for the second rise, except I forgot to turn off the oven that time for about 6 minutes. As it turns out, "warm" is actually pretty hot. After a mad dash to the oven to yank it out, there was a thin crust just starting to form. Oops. Luckily it still turned out okay. :D

2. I don't have bread flour, so I use regular all purpose flour. I think this is the big factor. I am going to try these again with some Vital Wheat Gluten next time and I think they will be much more soft, chewy, and bready-awesome.