I agree. The current system is not cool.
I believe the developers thought it was cool to let crafting be something the community would figure out and then share - just like with Minecraft. So I would really recommend that you just download crafting recipe lists of the web.
Personally, I think it should all be feasible without ever going on the web to look up stuff.
So I would have preferred a more streamlined recipe/crafting system where learnt recipes would actually be listed explicitly.
