Brooke Desprez, an Orange County native who co-founded a popular local pastry company, died Sept. 9, her family confirmed in a statement on social media. She was 63.
“After a fierce battle with breast cancer, our beloved chef and gifted visionary, Brooke Desprez, passed away,” read a statement her family posted to the Instagram page for Oliboli Donuts, which she and her husband founded in 2018.
While not a formally trained patissier in the classical sense, Desprez honed her skills for years while working as a caterer, then helped found Sidecar Doughnuts, a doughnut shop known for its inventive and contemporary takes on the beloved fried dough pastry. Her vision helped turn it into a successful chain, with seven locations across Southern California to date.
In a 2015 interview with Food GPS, Desprez explains how she first got into the culinary arts, saying, “The way I got into food — my daughter went to a school where the parents were really involved. I was in charge of the hospitality. … That’s where I started experimenting with different flavor combinations and large quantities. That’s where my love of food really started.”
Desprez’s magnum opus was opening Oliboli Donuts, along with her husband, Victor, in 2018. The Tustin shop specializes in naturally leavened, sourdough treats of sweet and savory varieties. For her doughnuts, the lauded chef used stone ground spelt flour to capture wild yeast from the surrounding air, developing her dough gently in a 40-hour process using artisanal techniques like autolyse, fermentation and poolish.
“She was the most amazing person who always put people before herself,” Hailey Desprez, Brooke’s daughter, said Wednesday. “And her food speaks for itself. She came up with simple recipes and always trusted the ingredients, which she let shine through.”
And shine they did. Her baking prowess and flavor profiles led to a loyal customer following and the kind of glowing ink most chefs only dream of reading. For a feature headlined “Los Angeles is a Doughnut Town” feature, New York Times critic-at-large Tejal Rao beamed, “Alone, I will happily drive 45 minutes out of the way to Oliboli, in Tustin, for the Meyer lemon-glazed doughnut, and the singular ham-and-cheese-filled doughnut with its finely bubbled surface and sweetly perfumed center.”
Oliboli also landed on several best-of lists, including as one of the best doughnut shops list in 2022 Best of Orange County voting, where we stood in awed over flavors like the Bumbleberry, “a vanilla cake filled and glazed with a ‘bumble’ of berries like wild blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries” and the banana-topped Banoffee gilded with banana whipped cream, toffee sauce and streusel.
Desprez’s family, with whom she work alongside at Oliboli, went on to say, “Chef Brooke’s legacy of thoughtful intention, masterful cooking and enthusiasm for the best will continue on in Oliboli; led by her family, which she held so dear and community for which she was so grateful. Thank you all for your loving kindness and support during this incredibly difficult time.”
Desprez is survived by her husband, Victor; her daughter, Hailey; and her son, Hunter.
