Enfeoffment

[Slava]

For quite a thorough introduction, see: The Ultimate Guide to Proofing Bread Dough.

It uses both 'proofed' and 'proved', so it looks like it's up to what we want to use.

[bbeeton]

As I understand it, in breadmaking, "proofing" is the action of determining whether the yeast is still viable (interesting rearrangement of the letters in "alive" plus "b"), not the rising of the dough. If the yeast isn't viable, the dough won't rise, so even mixing it into the flour/whatever is not useful.

[bnjtokyo]

According to the link Slava provided "proofing yeast" and "proofing bread" are different things. Proofing yeast proves the yeast is alive and well. What proofing bread proves I don't know. And Slava, thanks for the link. I checked with the Ngram Viewer: "proofing bread" goes back to about 1900 and has been mentioned in the Congressional Record.

[Dr. Goodword]

Proof, of course, does come from prove when prove lost its final E, like believe > belief. However, proof has far too many meanings now for a Good Word. It is semantically all over the map.

[David Myer]

I love your Elizabethan tobacco poem, bnjtokyo. I guess the Elizabethan Songbook resides on your shelf?

In the absence of mention in your American cookbooks, I have referred to Larousse Gastronomique (tagged The World's Greatest Cookery Encyclopedia). The entry under prove starts with these words:

prove (rise) POUSSER

Of dough, to increase in volume through the action of a raising (leavening) agent

It then proceeds to tell us how to do it.

But the clue is the word POUSSER (their capitalisation) which more or less directly translates to PUSH. This doesn't explain what it has to do with Proof. But I like the ideas here that what we are proving at this stage is whether there is any life left in the yeast - whether it is still able to push.