/ck/ - Food & Cooking

If I understand correctly, the key to oven spring is to start baking when the yeast is at the height of it's activity, but before it uses up ??? and goes dormant.
This means catching the sweet spot between under-proofing and over-proofing.
Is there any way of telling where the dough is in this sense?
If you've gone too far, the dough goes sticky, but by then it's too late.
If it's not rising, something(?) is wrong, and there's no point in starting the bake.
I know finger poke with slow springback is a good sign, but that's pretty vague.

Anything else that could help, or is it just case of memorizing exactly what works for you, and it just works most of the time?