Proof Bakery — Restaurant in Starkville

AVOID this place at all cost!! For you Starkville locals, it saddens me that you do not have a local bakery that can do custom cakes or even the decency to do right by their customers. Please read through the many text messages that were exchanged between me and head chef/owner (TJ). I promise you do NOT want to spend your hard earned dollars here!!! I can see now as to why the store had to do a SECOND grand re-opening. From the chef/owner, not showing any accountability after serving a marble cake recipe that she has NEVER made before without informing me well beforehand, not abiding by what I requested to be included (& paid for) on said cake (refer to the colors of the Masters hood and lack of MS State memorabilia), and not offering any refund of original payment method but instead a $50 gift card and a remake of the same dry, hard, non-marble cake. It's baffling to see she rather me show my disgust for her product in a lobby full of people then text her on the side. For those of my marble cake fans, when has marble ever meant 90% vanilla and 10 % chocolate?! Lastly, from the bakery to the AirBnB was a 1.2 mile drive but when I say everything fell of the cake cause the owner did NOT have a proper cake box and gave me the cake in a moving box. Mind you I placed this order a month in advance...PLENTY of time to get the proper cake box. But I guess with a cake this bad, a moving box was the ideal box to throw it in the dumpster. What a whirlwind this was from a bakery chef with 10+ years experience. The cake definitely lacked the experience she...

I've wanted to check out Proof for quite sometime. So, today after a doctor's appointment, I decided to stop in for a sweet pick me up. I ordered a Hammie and a slice of the Braided Blueberry Cardamom Croissant Danish. I was hopefule these items will cheer me and maybe make me a bit nostalgic for the time I lived in Switzerland and great pastry shops were aplenty. The attendant rang me up... $14.74! And that was with 20% off the Hammie. I thought, this is going to be an amazing party for my mouth and other senses...

Not so much. The Hammie was good; flaky and a nice texture. While I wasn't expecting this savory pastry to do my laundry, for the price, I expected it to be more than just average. The Blueberry Cardamom danish was good but, anything with blueberries is at least good in my book.; they're my favorite. It didn't WOW me. An upper layer of this croissant/danish hybrid was just shy of done and the bottom, outside layer was slightly burnt.

I can't say I'd be willing to try Proof again. The items I tried were okay. Certainly not worth the price,...

Updates after 3 years (April 2023): This place has lots of addition to the menu and you can find new pastry almost every time you walk in. This time I had pizza bagel and a croissant with lavender feeling, which was delightful! Cute seatings for outside and inside. A little charm in Starkville!

Original post (2020): Awesome new addition to Starkville! All the breads are delicious. Their menu varies depending the day so check the menu before you go. They don’t serve lunch menu on Tuesday, which I think needs to be clarified on the menu. I went on Tuesday after breakfast hour so they had bagels, scones, and cookies. Had two different flavors of bagel - both delicious with cream cheese! They have a toaster in the corner (next to coffee) if you like to toast your bagel which I did. C4 cookie was recommended and good. Hope they serve breakfast bagels during lunch time and add more variety of espresso (latte, cappuccino) in the near future too! Overall good experience....