In non-subscribed WoW, is cooking level limited?
Yes, all professions on starter accounts are limited to 100 skill points.
My level appears to be maxed at 40. Help!!!
You’ll only get skillpoints when making stuff that is orange, yellow, or green. (Orange is a guaranteed point, yellow give you a point more often than not, and green is less likely.) Once a recipe goes grey, it will never give you skill ups.
If you’re tying to cook stuff that isn’t grey, then I’m not sure what is going on. Maybe the cap is lower and the info I looked up is out of date. If you need to find some stuff to cook that isn’t grey, here are a couple of options that are easy to get to in the Blood Elf areas:
Landraelanis (he’s in the Falconwing Square Inn) will sell a recipe for Lynx steak. (You can get the meat to make it from the all of the Lynxes in Eversong Woods and Ghostlands.) That one goes grey at 85.
Staring a skill level 50, you can make boiled clams. (That recipe is taught by the cooking trainer. The best source for clams in the Blood Elf areas is the Murlocs on the beach in western Ghostlands. (They’ll drop clams you can open for clam meat.) That recipe doesn’t go grey until 130, so will take you to the max for a starter account.
is spicy bread grey at level 40?
Yes, spice bread goes grey at 40.
The easiest way to level cooking is with with fishing.
You can catch Kaladori Herring/Smallfish to level cooking to 50/60, and Longjaw Mudsnapper can get your cooking to 100.
You need to learn the fishing skill and the recipes may be sold by fishing equipment vendors or retail goods vendors. Not every one of those vendors will have them.
If you are still in the Blood elf area, other ways to level cooking include:
Return to Falcon Wing Square and go upstairs at the Inn there, there’s an NPC who sells a recipe for cooking Lynx Steaks near the cooking trainer, whom, I believe, will also have additional recipes you can purchase at 40.
When you Questing takes you to Ghostlands, there is a cooking trainer in Tranquillen who also offers cooking supplies including a recipe for using Bat meet and another one for spider legs. So save any of those two items you get before you get the recipe.