bread and pudding

last weekend i made the challah from baking with julia. is it just me or do challah doughs seem to require more flour than what recipes usually say? because my past experience with challah has always been overly wet dough.
the result of overly wet dough? too much flour added. the bread was quite heavy, though it didn't feel that heavy when it was warm.

so, too much un-ideal bread means bread pudding! because soaking 'bad' bread in sweet custard then baking it makes it utterly soft and delicious.
i finally got down to using the vanilla paste that sonya sent over almost half a year ago. but i didn't use enough of it, so it was hard to see the speckles of vanilla by the end of the baking.