Gourmet's Irish Soda Bread

From the Gourmet Cookbook:

Ingredients:

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons caraway seeds
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 3/4 cups buttermilk, well-shaken
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Butter and flour a large baking sheet, knocking off excess flour.
2. Sift together 4 cups flour, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and stir in sugar, caraway, and raisins. Add buttermilk and stir just until dough is evenly moistened but still lumpy.
3. Transfer dough to a well-floured surface and gently knead with floured hands about 8 times to form a soft but slightly less sticky dough. Halve dough and form into 2 balls. Pat out each ball into a domed 6-inch round on baking sheet. Cut a 1/2-inch-deep X on top of each loaf with a sharp knife, then brush loaves with butter.
4. Bake in middle of oven until golden brown and bottoms sound hollow when tapped, 35 to 40 minutes. Transfer loaves to racks to cool completely.

RESULTS:

This turned out much better, really moist and not at all comparable to an anvil. I really like that it made two small loaves and that I could bake it at a lower temperature for shorter time, I may try that with the Alice Waters recipe if I do it again this year. (The key problem with the AW recipe was that at higher the temperatures my oven becomes increasingly eccentric, which is partly why it turned into a rock-hard lump.) So far this year, this recipe is running away with the competition.

I left the raisins in, even though I hate raisins, because I was a little afraid that taking them out would affect the overall moisture of the bread. Any thoughts?