When I make manicotti, I don’t cook the pasta before filling, I just spoon the cheese mix into the uncooked tubes and cover with slightly watered down sauce so that there is some liquid for the manicotti to soak up while baking.
This all makes me want to learn how to make lasagna.
A “friend” told me about this trick right before a dinner party I was throwing. Like a fool I went ahead and trusted her; the result was a gluey mess. I was mortified, and ordered pizza for my guests instead.
Multiple people have told me they do this and it comes out wonderful, but there is something they do that is different than my method.
I think you can get used to it over time. My gf can’t handle hot stuff in the kitchen and is amazed that I can. I cooked for a living for a year in my youth and maybe picked up techniques or calluses.
I’m hands on with other stuff. Turning burgers/kabobs/etc on the grill I use a spatula under and my hand over.
I have found that putting the lasagna together in the morning and leaving it in the fridge all day, or until next day, will avoid the gluey mess, which I have had too when I have been pressed for time. I suppose the plates are softened, lying in the sauce for hours.
I’ve done it your way and I’ve also done it where I put it together and bake immediately. I’ve never noticed a difference. It’s always come out great.
Some lasagna recipes include a lot more free liquid than others do. The wetter ones will soften the noodles adequately. The drier ones won’t.
Some ricottas are much wetter than others. Some meat fillings are quite fatty while others are quit lean. Lots of differences there too.
I may be wrong, but ‘warm, soapy, bleach water’ produces some poisonous gas, right?
Depends on what other cleaners you mix with the bleach. Because consumers are stupid, the warnings on the bleach bottles say to never mix anything with bleach. They’re more interested in not getting sued than they are in scientific accuracy.
It happens that ordinary liquid dish soap is safe. Although it’s hard to know when that formulation might change and add at least trace amounts of something problematic. Here’s a cite:
This. The bleach (and other cleaner) bottles used to be more specific. You can put bleach in the washing machine you run in your home and that mixes with your laundry cleaner. Yet people have lived to tell the tale. Same goes for dish soaps. But don’t mix with ammonia, lye, etc. But your dish soap is safe.
Do not mix bleach and ammonia - boy, I almost learned that one the hard way. Working at a pizza place in college, one day I was assigned to clean out the grubby 55 gallon rolling trash cans in the kitchen. I poured some ammonia in the bottom of a trash barrel and sprayed in a bunch of hot water. Then, just before I commenced to scrubbing, I thought “hey, how about some bleach to help de-gunk this thing?” The manager on duty saw what I was doing and literally grabbed me by the collar and yanked me back as I was about to dive headfirst into the trash barrel to scrub out the bottom. 
Noodle technology seems to have improved over the years. Most brands say you can simply bake the noodles in sauce when making lasagna. They didn’t always say this, though I have never used any other method.
There’s such a thing as “no boil” lasagna noodles according to a recipe I found.
It’s been my experience that oven ready pasta needs plenty of sauce to cook in.
Oven ready is easier but I prefer to cook the noodles first, and it’s easier to get them to fit in a smaller baking dish if already cooked. Though I have been successful in snapping them first when dry. Sometimes I just want two small bakes ( one veg, one meat) and not one humongous whopper of a bake.
Googling tells me that no boil lasagna noodles are thinner. Also they are preboiled and then dried so kind of par cooked.
Add a little extra liquid because the noodles will have to absorb some of what’s there.
I’ve always made lasagna with dry noodles. I’ve never had a problem with it coming out crunchy or soggy. I must have a gift.
I make lasagna a lot, but I’ve never used unboiled noodles. I figure the absolute best case is it will turn out a little dryer than I want it to be, and I don’t see any upside in monkeying with my recipe to try to add enough extra liquid to avoid that.
My grandmother had asbestos hands. She’d been known to get casseroles out of the oven without pot holders. Nobody, including her, was ever sure how she was able to do it.
If you routinely handle stupid-hot stuff you get used to it. Somehow.
As a HS & college student I was involved in theater lighting. In that gig you’re always handling hot metal. I got able to easily deal with temps that would have made me cry 3 years previously. Or raised blisters quickly in an ordinary person.
Now, 50 years later, that “skill” has been gone for 40 years. But it was real.