Bread is basically just flour, water, and yeast, so it's pretty hard to make it inedible unless you burn it to a crisp in the oven.
The difference between all-purpose flour and bread flour is gluten strength; if you substitute all-purpose flour then your bread won't rise as high or be as strong; this is a desirable quality in, say, cake, but not bread.
However, AP flour isn't that far off from bread flour in terms of gluten; while cake flour may be as low as 6% and bread flour can be as high as 14%, AP flour tends to weigh in at around 10% or more, which is why it's called "all-purpose". As Michael says, yeast bread is actually not as sensitive to the exact quantities as (for example) most pastries, but it's still better to use a recipe that was actually built around AP flour instead of just trying to substitute it for bread flour.
If you are determined to make the substitution, then I would suggest you try to find some wheat gluten and add a small amount of that to the AP flour. Mathematically, if you assume that you're lacking some 3% protein, then you'd want to add about 1 tbsp of gluten for every 2 cups of flour. It's really not much, though, and if you don't have or can't find wheat gluten then your bread would probably survive anyway with AP flour, it just might be a little denser than you expect.
Although similar, spelt has more protein and less starch than wheat flour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat#Nutrition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelt#Nutrition
This means that it will create a great structure but won't absorb as much liquid. This would result in exactly what you saw- it was sticky from water and protein and too loose to hold its shape but baked with a good crust.
The recipes I have seen use a mixture of flours that includes spelt.
Try adding less water.
Best Answer
The hot water method is all about making gluten (flour strength) ineffective, so using bread flour has very doubtful merit. A recipe insisting on its use might have other problems (baking too hot or too long, having too high or too uneven thickness (use a rolling pin, period), or using too little fat) that it tries to compensate by using strong flour. Note that fat content is essential - medieval style hot water crusts that used little or no fat were intended as a food preserving shell, not as an edible part of the dish.