Challah Bread

I don't know the religious significance of this bread, but I really like how fluffy it is. I know it's also called egg bread, but the bread is not eggy at all. And the braids look so pretty. This time I tried adding raisins. I added them halfway through the kneading process, afraid to break the raisins (which had been plumped up with a soaking in some apple juice,) and they still started to fall apart on me, so I just 'massaged' them in. The bake time was about 30 minutes, but 15 minutes in, they were already brown. So I covered it with foil and baked 15 min. longer, which unfortunately overbaked the bread, causing it to be a little dry and hard. We still enjoyed it though.