This is pretty minor but for a few years now, I've realized there's so much variety in recipes for the same food that it doesn't even matter whether you follow a recipe. You basically just have to make sure the food isn't dangerously undercooked, and that's is. Like, literally. There are even burned things that are supposed to be burned. Whatever you come up with will probably exist somewhere, by some name, or at the very least, your version won't be crazily different from an existing unusual version.
I'm about to make knishes now and I decided to look up a recipe even with this realization. I found a recipe that didn't require butter, so I was happy even though I figured I could leave it our anyway. I knew the black pepper was optional. I knew I could substitute whole wheat flour. I'm not even letting the dough sit in plastic wrap because I've tried skipping that step when making pasta and it's fine. I'm not measuring. If they're 75% thicker than typical knishes, fine. If I invent the pancake kinish, fine.
It's not like I'm such an experienced cook that I don't need recipes. It's just that it doesn't matter if it's different from anything else out there, and it probably won't be.
