After reading through, it became apparent that this isn't geared at good pizza, it's focused on bad pizza where none of that matters, like cafeterias, gas stations, and football stadiums.
After reading through, it became apparent that this isn't geared at good pizza, it's focused on bad pizza where none of that matters, like cafeterias, gas stations, and football stadiums.
Regardless, there is no standard for baking, each little extra bit of yeast, sugar, etc. you add in can make it an entirely different product. This gives it its own personal craft aspect, hence why it can be an art.
The challenge of baking is that the components aren't very standardized. You won't get a consistently good result by robotically mixing 1000.0g flour with 7.00 g yeast and 650 mL distilled 35˚C water, and mixing for 400 seconds. The flour varies from bag to bag, even of the same brand. Yeast is alive and responds differently depending on the temperature and other conditions; sourdough cultures are even more finicky.
As a result, there's an "art" to knowing when to add more water/flour or deciding when the bread is ready to shape and bake. I would bet you could get this more under control in a commercial/industrial setting, where you've got proofing cabinets that control the ambient temp/humidity and other specialized equipment. At home though, you've more or less got to do it by feel.
When it comes to baking, you are still shaping, structuring, patterning, coloring(or not coloring) your breads.
However, reality is there are wayyy more variables than what you can find in a recipe, even a good one. And that's to say nothing of the techniques of master bakers. Compare a what a master does and what they're able to write down or tell someone and it's an enormous gap. That's where the art is.