For the loaf of bread: Pumpkin Yeast Bread

Nominee for Failed Bread of the Year

This bread had everything right in principle. I had read several recipes in books and online for a yeast bread using pumpkin puree and decided to use the collected ideas and do it my own way. However I made one silly but crucial mistake. Try to guess what it might have been.

Recipe
For two loaves
100 g rolled oats (ground for 30 seconds) (~1 cup)
138 g bread flour (~1 cup)
412 g whole wheat flour (~3 cups)
1½ tsp instant yeast
14 g salt (2 tsp)

32 g brown sugar (3 Tbsp)
1 tsp ground ginger
¾ tsp ground cardamom (5 pods)
73 g orange juice (¼ cup)
389 g pumpkin puree (1 cup)
27 g vegetable oil (2 Tbsp)
2 eggs

134 g whole wheat flour (~1 cup)

Ingredients

Dry and wet ingredients mixed with 1 cup of flour for later mixing

2:07 pm: Bringing it together

2:24 pm: Ready for first rise

The first rise was not impressive after more that 3 hours. That got me wondering and I realized what I had done wrong. There wasn't much I could do at this point to improve my chances of a good loaf. I decided to go ahead with the baking anyway.

6:25 pm: After second rise

I wanted to make a braid using this technique by smitten kitchen. I had also kept aside some butter and brown sugar to use as filling. However with my failed dough and the messy filling, it wasn't easy to shape the dough.

6:56 pm: Making a braid

7:02 pm: Bumpy braid trying to rise

The second half of the dough got a second rise before being shaped into a loaf.

7:53 pm: Second loaf got regular treatment

8:30 pm: Not an impressive rise

Post baking and after the braid lost a couple limbs to taste testers

Any guesses about what might have gone wrong?

Here goes: I had used whole wheat pastry flour instead of whole wheat flour! I store both bags in similar containers, and had picked the wrong one.

Can't have a post with only failures to note. So here are pictures from a holiday baking attempt.

Stained Glass Cookies
I made these cookies from a recipe on Simply Recipes.They were made to share at a Holiday Gift and Recipe exchange with some girlfriends. Mine look nowhere as pretty as the ones Elsie has in her post, but they weren't too bad.