Most of what's below is just me thinking out loud. But thinking about beer is a worthwhile pleasure, so here goes:
I've been thinking about brewing a pumpkin beer and going over what seems to me to be conflicting information in my head.
Above, it is suggested to include a 30 minute protein rest when including the pumpkin in the mash. But in Palmer's book, he says that doing a protein rest with malts that are already well modified can rob the beer of body and render it thin (1st paragraph,
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14-4.html). So, I'm picturing doing a sort of split mash, with the pumpkin and a few pounds of the malt for 30 minutes at 125F followed by 60 minutes at 154F, mashing the rest of the grains for 60 min. at 154F in parallel, and then combining the runoffs.
From what I've read, though, it's clear that thin body isn't really vexing anyone, either because the protein rest isn't really that harmful, or the pumpkin puts back in some of the body, or some other reason I haven't thought of. Equally clear to me is that this scheme is likely to triple the amount of work for zero or nearly-zero benefit. It would be a fun experiment, but never having done it the conventional way, I'd have no basis for comparison and wouldn't know whether I had learned anything.
But it also made me wonder whether there are other scenarios where a mash is split up somehow where there really would be a reason to do so. I know some people cold steep dark grains (and others argue that if the pH is correct it's unnecessary), which is a similar idea.