It started with one stubborn sourdough starter.
Twelve years later, that starter still gets fed every morning at 5am — and it still runs the place.
A small room, a hot oven, and patience.
Proof Bakehouse began in 2014 in a borrowed commissary kitchen, baking forty loaves at a time and selling them off a folding table at the Eastgate farmers market. The bread sold out by nine. People kept asking where the shopfront was. There wasn’t one yet.
We opened the doors on Marlowe Street two years later with a single deck oven and a simple idea: give good ingredients enough time and they’ll do most of the work. Long, slow ferments. Real butter, folded by hand. Flour milled from grain we can trace back to the farm.
“We don’t rush the dough. The dough tells us when it’s ready, and we listen.”
That patience is the whole philosophy, and it’s where the name comes from — proofing is the quiet stretch where dough rests and rises before it ever sees the oven. Nothing good skips it. We’ve grown since then, but the rhythm of the bakery hasn’t changed: mix at night, shape before dawn, bake through the morning, sell until it’s gone.
Three things we won’t cut corners on.
Grain we can trace
We buy from regional mills and name the farms on our flour. If we don’t know where it grew, we don’t bake with it.
Time over shortcuts
No dough conditioners, no overnight rush. Fermentation is flavor, and flavor takes hours we’re happy to give it.
A fair counter
Day‑old bread goes to the community fridge, not the bin. Staff are paid a living wage and share in tips.
Who’s in the kitchen.
Come in before the case empties.
We bake fresh every morning and sell until it’s gone. Earlier is better.
Hours & directions