I went to do the bulk ferment on my cranberry walnut sourdough last night and because the house was a bit cooler than normal I decided to give the temps a little boost by turning on the oven for a bit (usually 3-5 minutes before turning it off) so that the right rear burner will then be nice and warm for a while. Well then I got distracted by a movie I was watching (can't count the number of times that's led to some kind of cooking fail, lol), and at least 30 minutes must have passed before I realized what happened. I ran and yanked it off the stove, felt the bottom which was quite hot, started filling the sink with cold water and took a couple of readings with my infrared gun - the bottom was 129 °F (59 °C) while the top of the dough was about 110 °F (43 °C) and then plunged the container into the cold water for about 5 minutes. I then dumped it onto the counter, it looked fairly flat and the interior was still quite warm so I immediately started folding until the overall temp was uniform (about 112 °F/44 °C) put it in a bin and stuck it in the fridge.  It doesn't look TOO bad this morning seems like there's some life, but now I'm thinking about adding in a fresh batch of starter and take it from there. SOOOO, anyone else ever managed to save a batch under similar circumstances? ;?) 
If your goal is to cook more intuitively (i.e. to make food without always following a recipe, and to be comfortable adapting a known recipe to suit your ingredients/preferences), then you will need to practice doing that – if all your cooking processes at the moment involve closely following a recipe then you are not practicing the skills of making decisions about ingredients, quantities, cooking methods and so on (although you certainly are practicing your technique and gaining general kitchen experience of course). If you are used to working closely to a recipe then moving 'off-road' can be intimidating;  a few suggestions to ease the transition:  Cook together with someone who cooks intuitively, and ask them to explain their thinking as they go along. Not everyone is good at cooking together with others but hopefully you have a friend or family member whom you can learn from. Look for recipes that include flexibility: a very popular book recently in the UK is Rukmini Iyer's The Roasting Tin which includes lots of suggestions for building up a dish from principles like 'grain + protein + vegetables' and substitutions in the recipes. Try to combine different recipes; for example, use the main ingredients from one thing you like and the sauce from something else you like, and see how they work together. When you haven't got the specific ingredient for a recipe, look at what ingredients you do have and think about how you could use that instead.  