Honestly this fear is overblown. Unless you’re making pastries, baking is relatively straightforward and forgiving. Breads, cakes and pies ove you and want you to have fun. Experimenting with vegan substitutions, gluten free baking and scaling batch sizes helped me feel much less intimidated by recipes, you learn what role the ingredients are playing and how to adjust if you add too much, too little, or too not the right thing.

IDK, I’ve been having a hell of time trying to make my pizza doughs rise.

either your yeast is dead or you’re killing it with water that’s too hot, hard to see why else it wouldn’t rise