Making Challah Bread

After no power for four days, I decided to celebrate the return of electricity by baking a celebration bread - Challah from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. I have tried it before and it is always tasty. I followed the recipe except it rose for about an hour and 30 minutes for second rising rather than 45 minutes as the book recommended. I also used sesame seeds rather than poppy seeds since we had them laying around.
For the ingredients, I used King Arthur's unbleached all purpose flour, regular table salt and white sugar as well as canola oil.
The first rising was slow and didn't seem to double in size, but as one can see from the picture, the bread did rise enough to make a good sized loaf. I used four braids of dough to make the loaf. My daughter did the first few weaves and then I finished the loaf.

Taste - the crust is dark and crispy and the loaf is moist. My daughter claims she needs a bigger piece to get the full effect of the bread. She said it is cake like but not too heavy. It is moist and fluffy. I recommend it. Especially after losing power for a few days.

Baguettes Attempt 1

First attempt to bake baguettes since last year. I used King Arthur recipe, used warm water instead of cool water and also use mixer with dough hook to knead - about 4 minutes total. I needed to add about 3/4 cup of flour since dough was very wet. The weather was hot and humid and my house does not have AC.
Bread rose fine and was still very wet the whole time it was rising and I was working on it. I used a baking stone as well as a cast iron pot and 3/4 cup of water to create steam effect. I could have possibly made 4 loaves or divided dough more equitably. One loaf is much thicker than the rest. The other two also taper a bit two much as the end. Poolish was fine. No problems with the bread rising.

Next time - use cool water instead of warm water. Also might try a bit more flour on humid days.

Texture - Hard, crunchy crust and the interior has small, fairly uniform air pockets
Taste - slight sour taste, definitely different than the standard bread made with either 100% "regular" flour or 1/3 whole wheat flour and 2/3 "regular" flour.