Following a recipe is cooking with training wheels. Knowing why it works is when you can ride.

Steps get you through one instance and leave you stuck the moment anything differs. Understanding the reason behind each step means you can substitute, scale, fix it when it goes wrong, and eventually work without the page at all. The steps are scaffolding, useful and temporary. Most people stop before they take it down.

Next time you follow a procedure, pick one step and find out why it is there. What does it accomplish, what breaks without it. Do that a few times and you start improvising correctly rather than hoping.