When you start, you follow recipes. Pick a type of cuisine you like. At some point as you explore recipes you will start to understand the “flavor bouquet” of that cuisine. This understanding will help you with what spices go together in a pleasant way, and in what amounts. Like Thai food. Or Italian food.
That said, bread can be a gateway recipe. It’s simple: yeast, flour, water + a sugar to activate the yeast. Not all bread is sandwich bread. Starting with flatbread (for hummus, gyro, etc) or pizza crust also works. No bread machines, that would defeat the purpose of your original question, but a stand mixer with a dough hook is ok. For sandwich bread, King Arthur Flour has solid recipes (ignore ingredient branding).
If you like vids, Kenji Lopez-Alt is excellent. He also has a book called The Food Lab which is useful but not necessary, depending on how you learn. Serious Eats also has useful guides.
Their basic shortbread recipe is spot on, perfect.