So, has anyone made #gingerbread using fresh ginger? Without like dehydrating it and grinding it into powder? If I just like grate it and toss it in, will weird things happen?
Current status: I've peeled and sliced a couple of small hands of ginger, and have put them in a very slow oven; I will check every half an hour at a time until their appearance appeals to me, then I will take them out and make them smaller / grind them in some way, and then put some amount of them into the gingerbread dough! Then we'll see what happens!
So! After 30 minutes at a nominal 170F (the lowest this oven goes), the slices of peeled ginger were somewhat drier, but still flexible. Two additional 30 minute periods at the same nominal temperature produced no discernible further change, so I just minced them up rather fine and dumped them into the batter.
The recipe called for 2 tsp of ground ginger; I used probably 3-4 tsp, loosely packed, of minced slightly-dried fresh ginger root.
(A reader kindly linked me a recipe that calls for the ginger to be finely grated or "microplaned" and then made into a sort of paste; probably a good idea for next time, although also might involved work.)
The result is quite good! Not amazingly gingery, but somewhat, and so far there have been no confirmed reports of obvious bits of ginger causing an undesirably nonhomogenous eating experience.
@hasmis There have been a few signs of that, I admit.