There are a lot of [starter "blank" themes][2] to play with. Personally I'm quite happy with the [Toolbox][1] theme, it's minimalist, semantic, HTML5 theme with all the default WP pages (if that's what you consider "best practice") [1]: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/toolbox [2]: http://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress%20blank%20theme