BBCode in Posts?

Hello,

I remember that the documentation somewhere mentioned that you can use BBCode in your posts, that means discussion board syntax right?
However, all of my attempts to use it remained uninterpreted, such as using [b]xyz[/b] to write bold text.

I have to say that right now I find WordPress highly unintuitive to use, because you have to encode every single thing in HTML and CSS which can become very tedious (how is someone without HTML know-how to use WordPress at all??).

Did I miss something? Or maybe is there a plugin which allows for more intuitive text formatting as you know it from most CMS and other Blogs?

Thanks,
Matthias