I'd also like to remove as many apps as I want. If something breaks I'd eat it and re-install the whole system.

You can disable many system apps via the Settings UI. For ones where the naive heuristics or manual exceptions believe it may break something and have it disabled, you can use ADB. You can also uninstall apps from a profile including Owner with ADB instead of disabling them which is NOT a good idea but you can do it...