I tweaked the original recipe a little bit, swapping a ½ c whole wheat flour for the AP and plumping my raisins before adding them to the wet ingredients. I also used one loaf pan and everything fit just fine.
To compare the two, I wondered* if I needed to make them similar. This would mean adding raisins to Smitten's recipe, something I wasn't sure I wanted to do, as it was a virgin recipe. When asked, Chip suggested just make the recipes as is, so that's what I did.
As you can see, even just with the tops of the loaves, there is a mighty difference.
Personally, Maida Heatter's recipe is the winner. The Smitten loaf is very dense and wet (and perhaps I didn't bake long enough?), thus makes a squatter bread. The flavor is amazing, though, so it's not a total loss (I'm not fond of 'wet' breads). Chip liked the Smitten one a lot--he said the Maida version is a little rough (and that texture gets more so as it dries out) and the flavors of Smitten's were intense. He did miss the raisins in Smitten's, though.
Where does that leave me? Needing to try Smitten's again sometime, with some tweaks on my part.
* on FB and got no response... so much for crowd-sourcing...
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