Follow the recipe exactly the first time. You earn the right to break rules by knowing them.

The first run through a recipe is how you find out what the dish is meant to be. Improvising before you have that baseline leaves your changes with nothing to be measured against, so when it goes wrong you cannot tell whether the fault was the method or your substitution. Knowing a rule is what lets you break it on purpose instead of by accident.

Make the next new thing exactly as written, including the part you think is pointless. Taste it and note what you would change. Then cook it again with one deliberate change, not four.