The Provence Cookbook by Patricia Wells

In planning for our upcoming trip to France, we were looking at the southern region as a potential destination in addition to Paris.  In that spirit, on a whim, we picked up The Provence Cookbook by Patricia Wells.  That is, we picked it from the bookshelf.  We have owned it for a few year, an amazon bargin priced purchase.  Now, it seemed, was a good time to finally give this book a go.  We are trying to focus on French recipes up until our trip in June.  Ultimately, Provence did not make the cut for our vacation this time, but perhaps this book can provide us with a taste of what we'll be missing. 

Sarabeth's Challah

Sarabeth's Bakery: Recipe 5

A number of months ago I made Sarabeth's Challah. The recipe was for two loaves, and it turned out pretty well, though flatter than I would have expected.  I froze more than half of it and eventually used it to make multiple batches of French toast.  This time I was going to make cinnamon sugar french toast, and so decided I would make raisin challah.  Sarabeth gives a variation to include raisins, but she does not put it in an intuitive place in the recipe, but mentions that you can add raisins at such and such a step at the very end of the recipe directions.  Even though I knew this, I still almost missed when I was supposed to put the raisins in.  Making the bread dough is easy enough, but even after an extended rising period for the dough, it never got big and puffy like Sarabeth said it would.  But maybe I braided it too tight.  I am not sure.  Either way, the bread came out tasting good, the raisins adding a surprising sweetness that, as predicted, worked well in the French toast.  Though this recipe definitely works and produced a fine loaf of challah, next time I will try a different recipe because I know challah can be better than this, too.