Welcome, you have indeed picked the right forum, there are some good cooking minds amongst these pages..
If I were first starting into cooking I would start with home made bread and pasta, they took the longest for me to get right, I wish I started sooner.
There are a few reasons to start with pasta and bread though.
1 they have a huge range, you can start with a basic bread and a basic pasta and over time add and improve your recipe to something really complex and special.
2 the ingredients are probably already in your kitchen
3 the tools needed are also probably in your kitchen too
4 they are easy to start with and very rewarding
5 they most definitely taste better from your kitchen than from the store...
I would start with a nice italian dinner...
A basic bread recipe simple, flour, water, yeast, and salt. {olive oil maybe} You can mix and knead by hand if you don't have a stand mixer... You literally need them ingredients, an oven pan or stone and a spoon.
A flavored butter, this is as easy as it sounds, butter, whipped with sugar and honey or garlic and basil, the sky is the limit...
Then for pasta start with a basic pasta thats going to be flour, eggs, and olive oil mixed with a table fork, rolled with a bottle, and cut with a knife on your counter top..
A nice basic pasta sauce, onions, tomato, salt, sugar, and pepper...
That will give you a start, make it once a week and add/change something every time... Also its nice to buy 1 new kitchen tool per week, something simple like week 2 buy a fluted pastry wheel for cutting the pasta a little different, you can get a double sides one for $7 from nor pro.. Week 2 buy a nice bread knife like the victorinox 10.5" wavy edge for $35.
So changing the menu is easy, week one do the basic, week 2 add cornmeal to the bottom of your bread and a little sugar to the dough, add meatballs to the menu and try a new pasta cut like farfalle {easy cut a rectangle- 2 smooth sides and 2 fluted then pinch the center}, and maybe change something about your sauce that you noticed you didn't like las time, maybe some red flake, or fresh garlic, or butter, etc...
I started this way, now I make ravioli, lasagna, gnocchi, pierogi, so many different sauces I couldn't list them, french bread, sour dough, italian, rolls, loaves, braids, its endless...
And the best part is, I can have 6 cups of flour, some olive oil, 3-4 eggs, 4 fresh tomatoes, a couple onions, a packet of instant yeast, water, garlic, salt, and pepper and with just a stove, fork, and pan make an italian dinner that will rival most restaurants...
If you start this way some day you will be hand rolling your own spinach ricotta ravioli in a lemon butter cream sauce, while your 5 braid french loaf is rising in a flax couche...
Then once you are comfortable with your pasta, bread, sauce skills, you can start looking into other skills like roasts, soups, casseroles, and on and on and on...
We're happy to have you here. It isn't actually necessary to start with homemade bread, pasta and sauce right off the bat. Let us know how you would like to start and we would be happy to help.
