toulouse with erin mcdowell

May 26 -31, 2024

SOLD OUT!

Join us for a week of all things pastry with a true guru, Erin McDowell! We’ll all stay together at the Château de Labusquière in southwest France.

SOLD OUT!

May 26 - 31, 2024

6 Days, 5 nights

We can’t wait to show you around! There will be trips to the market for sourcing local produce and planning meals. We will learn baking secrets from the visionary Erin McDowell. We’ll taste our way through natural wines, local cheeses, and spend lots of time with the holy trinity of pastry - butter, flour, and sugar! We’ll take a day trip to the rosy city of Toulouse, and we’ll end the week with a group meal at a local restaurant so we can all take a night off from the kitchen!

From $4,300

What will you do?

Erin McDowell is a powerhouse baker and in May 2024, we secured a week in Toulouse with this visionary and gentle & good wunderkind! The Queen of the Sturdy Pie, we will learn so many of Erin’s tricks of pastry by way of her confident and friendly teaching methods, which have gained her the overwhelming popularity she deserves in the baking world. And we’ll get to eat her food together in revelry with some of France’s tastiest natural wines.


All of this in the truly magnificent, yet somehow sublimely simple and cozy, 13th-century Château de Labusquière. Our favorite home away from home , Château de Labusquière sits in a quiet corner of Gascony an hour west of Toulouse. Surrounded by more than 30 acres of fields and woodlands, you’ll be able to hike or just hang out with the resident peacock Yopi, who is a lover and a bit of a guard of the kitchen. A little pie dough wins him over every time. This unforgettable place will be our home for a week as we learn and explore together with Erin.

  • While we hope everyone will participate, all experiences are optional ! Please feel free to take time for yourself whenever you like.

  • Rêverie has carefully selected activities and experiences that we believe represent the best of the region and our own expertise, aiming to provide an optimal experience for the participants.

  • Cooking is communal, and we have the opportunity to cook together, learn from experienced cooks, and practice new techniques. The kitchen is an open space for everyone - come on in!

YOUR GUEST BAKER

Get to know:

Erin McDowell

Erin Jeanne McDowell fell in love with baking at a young age growing up in rural Kansas. With a little sweet talking, she landed her first job in a bakery at 16 years old. She attended pastry school at The Culinary Institute of America, with the goal of someday being able to combine her love of food with her love of writing. She started in food media first as a food stylist, but soon was writing and developing recipes for outlets like New York Times Cooking, The Washington Post, Food52, Bon Appetit, and more. She found a deep passion for teaching baking, and started to appear in videos for Food Network, Nickelodeon, Netflix, and Food52, where she hosts the award-winning series Bake it Up a Notch. She has written three baking cookbooks: The Fearless Baker, Savory Baking, and The Book on Pie, which is a New York Times Bestseller.

YOUR ITINERARY

*Please note that changes to the itinerary may occur between now and your retreat start date*

DAY ONE

sunday 5.26.24

Welcome to France! As you approach the beloved Château de Labusquière, you’ll feel swept away by the inviting vistas and the wheat fields. You’ll be welcomed with a glass of champagne and some post-travel snacks made by your hosts and then you will settle into your room before we gather for a welcome lunch to kick the week off! In the afternoon, we’ll kick off the workshop ceremonies with Erin’s first workshop on the mysterious yet deceptively simple Macaron! Come evening, we will all sit down to our first dinner at the château where local vegetables and good wine will be served in abundance!

DAY two

monday 5.27.24

On our second day, you’ll be greeted with breakfast: fresh local croissants, brioche, French yogurt and as much fresh fruit as we can cram on a table. The group will then head to the nearby village of Samatan to walk the local market and explore the idyllic township. Then it’s back to the Château, where a market lunch will be waiting for you. After some time to unwind, Erin will begin her next workshop: wrapping up macaron study and beginning her brioche exploration. Aperitif and dinner and some standard reverie will wrap up the first full day.

DAY three

tuesday 5.28.24

If we’ve done it right by now, the Château will start to be feeling like a home away from home. Erin will wrap up your exploration with Brioche and then you’ll have some time to rest before our luncheon in the garden. Then we’re off to Auch in our private chariots for a short (45 minute) drive to meet our local natural wine buddy, Virgil, at Le Merle Moqueur. He will lead us in an exquisite wine tasting that will leave you with a much deeper appreciation and understanding of the natural wine community. Our drivers will take us back for our Rêverie grill party - there will be french snacks, beverages, hangs by the pool, music and games! It has become one of our favorite nights of every retreat week where we can cut loose with our guests!

DAY four

wednesday 5.29.24

Today we intentionally tuck into the Château for a day of workshops, recovery, rest, book reading, long leisurely lunches and dinners and an opportunity to explore the kitchen and the grounds, or that good book (or the back of your eyelids) at any pace you choose for the day.  Erin will start a two part workshop, both parts occurring on this day, for - get ready - puff pastry! This beguiling dough is enough to send a home baker to their knees with its multi-step process and its mythological difficulty toward perfection. Erin will demystify all of this for you, let you get your hands in the dough, and teach you all you need to know from the détrempe to the proofing to the shaping. Lunch and dinner will be big, beautiful events, as per usual and by this day, we hope everyone is settling into the program with great ease.

DAY five

thursday 5.30.24

This is our official Big Day Out in the great, beautiful city of Toulouse! We will start the day slow and easy, giving you some time to pre-pack after breakfast and serving one last lunch in the courtyard with Yopi, the resident peacock. Then we’ll load up in the vans and head into one of our favorite cities in France. In Toulouse, you will be able to wander as you like with our guide that we’ve loaded up with some of our favorite stops. There are so many historic, culinary, and cultural joys to find in Toulouse - it’s quite the city to discover! Then we will have our final dinner together in the city. This will be a night to celebrate and remember - the fondest farewell between friends.

DAY six

friday 5.31.24

Today, we depart from our home for the week and we soak up every last breath of the wide open air of Gers. Breakfast will be served and we will say our goodbyes as the vans arrive to shuttle us all away from Labusquière and toward the airport so we can all make our way to our next destinations.

WORKSHOPS

French technique is the foundation for anyone interested in building or honing their classic baking and pastry skills. We are blissed out that our guests will have access to the incredible mind and experienced hands of Erin Jeanne McDowell at our cozy, love-filled Toulouse retreat. The kitchen and workshop spaces will be open for guests to jump in, watch demos, get their hands dirty and get down to the nitty gritty technique with one of the absolute best in the business. Erin’s fun and effervescent teaching style, which has brought her such well deserved accolades and vast audiences, in our small and intimately-sized group workshops will be the highlight of our guest’s experience during this week.

WORKSHOPS

  • Brioche - from start to finish, ingredient education to baking methods, shaping to fillings, Erin will take you there!

  • Puff Pastry - the mystery of laminated dough broken wide open for you! The nuances, the habits, the infinite possibilities of pastries that you can make with this one dough is like getting the keys to the kingdom

  • Macaron  - do we dare to tempt the humidity gods of summer by making macarons!? We sure do! Erin will take you through the steps of making this beautiful and delicate cookie and you will be invincible!

* Due to the nature of the experience we wish to provide, we can accommodate vegetarians, but will be unable to accommodate any further dietary restrictions.

EXPLORE

​​We can’t wait to show you around! There will be a trip to the market in nearby Samatan for sourcing local, seasonal produce. Then, a stroll around the gorgeous plazas and old streets of Toulouse, one of France’s largest cities. We will have so many great moments at the chateau as well - from long languorous dinners in the courtyard with Yopi and the moonlight, to outdoor cooking parties (protein technique!) by the pool, to pâté and saucisson and gougère filled apéro hours. It’s made with love, we promise you that!

OUTINGS

  • Shopping at the open-air market in Samatan

  • Explore the beautiful city of Toulouse and the incredible Victor Hugo Market

  • Group dinner in Toulouse

WHAT’S INCLUDED

Everything! Well, everything except for your big ride across the ocean and to the chateau’s nearest airport. But once you arrive, we got you.

  • Transfers to and from the château from the Toulouse Blagnac airport.

  • Workshops and all materials associated  

  • Recipes galore!

  • All meals, unless you go rogue

  • All wine and beverages, unless you wanna have your own after hours party ;)

  • Private coach transportation while on retreat

  • All scheduled outings and events during our week

  • Chateau lodging, naturally

GETTING HERE

*Cost of airfare to the Toulouse Blagnac airport is not included in the cost of your reservation. Please let us know if we can offer any support or guidance with your travel plans - we’re happy to help!

Airplane

Several planes fly direct to Toulouse Blagnac airport (TLS) every day from Paris and London. We will arrange airport pickups on the first day of the retreat, and we will drop you off on the last day. All you have to do is get to Toulouse and we’ll take it from there.

Car

If you’re the seasoned-traveler type and you’d enjoy having your own transportation, then please- rent a car in Paris and drive down! Have a stopover in the region of Dordogne for a foie gras tartine and make a pitstop for the wild view of the old city Rocamadour.  You could then keep your car for the week and choose your own destiny, or drop off at the Toulouse airport on the first day of the retreat and we’ll come grab you.

Train

Trains are another option for those who feel comfortable traveling around on their own.  

We would be able to pick up from the Gimont Cahuzac train station.

Travel Reservation

If you would like guidance with booking your travel to the Chateau, please reach out.

We are here to help make this part easy and smooth.

If you would like to extend your stay in France, we are delighted to partner with The French Travel , a locally owned and operated trip designer based in Paris. They are true experts who will help you perfectly plan your before and/or after Rêverie experience. Check them out for more info!

Our friends at Coucou French school offer some incredible online French language classes - whether you’re looking to brush up on your high school French or looking to learn a few phrases to feel more comfortable with travel, Coucou is the way! Check out their website for more information.