I am trying to get the hang of hand planing and am wondering if there is a preferred method to get rid of a small recess in the middle of a panel where I slightly misaligned the board edges during the glue up.

It seems like the concept would be to bring the entire panel down to the depth of the recess, then re-flatten and smooth.

The panel with this defect is about 9 inches by 24 inches, but once I get this figured out, I am going to take a stab at flattening the top of the workbench I built that has a few of those same issues, and don't want to screw that one up.

I've got a No. 8, a No. 5, a No. 4 and a 62 low angle. I was intending to start diagonally with the No. 5, then along the grain with the No. 8, and then smooth with the No. 4. Does that sound even close to the right order of things?