If you want to make baking easier... have a large container--cupboard preferably--with buckets. Fill buckets with water, flour, or whatever else you can store in them.In fact, if you can figure it out, have 7 or 8 open cupboards, plus your pack and two hands loaded. (surround yourself with the cupboards.) All of these open containers can be used to pull inventory for crafting. Note that you can't actually craft out of barrels. That's what the buckets are for.
For grinding flour, fill a bucket with wheat or barley seeds, put in one hand, and an empty bucket in the other. When you grind the flour, it'll pull seed out of the buck and put the flour into the other.
The wiki: http://ringofbrodgar.com/wiki/Haven_and_Hearth_Wiki
As far as resets: devs try to do them as little as possible. The grand idea is to never need one, but seems they're coming up with something new that requires it about once a year. Most people don't make it more than 3-4 months before succumbing to ennui, though.