I'm not an authority, but I remember having problems too, because the manual section on crafting was written before some changes were made. Also, the crafting menu hasn't been revised to reflect those changes.
Don't use "examine recipes and craft item." As you have found out, it doesn't work. The PRC dropped reciped based crafting a couple years ago, if I recall correctly. You should also see in the same right menu a choice that says, "craft item." If you select that and then craft on the item you want to work on, you should get the appropriate choices for that item.
I should mention that, from a strategic standpoint, crafting is only a good idea in some modules. Crafting magic items requires both gold and experience, and the really good modifications tend to require a lot of both. Consequently, crafting isn't of much use in low gold, low experience modules and can be problematic in very linear modules in which the amount of experience you can earn is more or less fixed and in which the final battle is geared to a particular level--craft a bit, and you may never reach that level. Crafting works best in open ended, high gold, high experience modules (like Endless Nights IV or Kingdom of Bortiis).
Also, crafting may be challenging with a sorcerer. Whether it is or not depends on how you have configured PRC code switches (accessible through the PRC radial under "alter code switches.") By default, PRC uses PNP crafting, which among other things requires the casting of particular spells to accomplish the crafting. Some of these spells may not be that useable for other purposes. Because a sorcerer's spell selection is limited, and a sorcerer can't learn new spells from scrolls, a sorcerer should learn the spells that are the most useful in combat. Learning spells just to craft with them may not be a good strategy unless you are playing in a persistent world as part of a large party. on the other hand, if you have set the "allow arbitrary crafting" to 1 (on), then the only relevant variable is your caster level. You can craft without knowing a particular spell as long as you have the correct crafting feat. Then sorcerers (or any other spellcaster, arcane or clerical) are equally good crafters. If you want to use PNP crafting, you probably want to be a wizard, with an archivist as another good possibility; both classes can learn spells from scrolls and thus can hypothetically learn any spell, memorize it to craft with it, then memorize other spells in preparing for combat and not worry about whether or not the crafting spell has combat value. Actually, for PNP crafting the absolute best choice is a wizard/archivist/mystic theurge, which creates a caster capable of knowing any arcane spell and any divine spell and being able to learn many spells just for crafting without restricting spell choices for other situations.
I hope this helps a little bit.
