toulouse with erin mcdowell
May 17 -22, 2025
Join us for another week of all things pastry with the true guru, Erin McDowell! We’ll all stay at the Château de Labusquière in southwest France, our home away from home!
May 17 - 22, 2025
6 Days, 5 nights
Erin McDowell joins us for the second time in the South of France! 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, where we’ll end the week with a meal at one of the city’s best restaurants. Join us for the week of your sweetest dreams with one of the best bakers in the business!
From $4,600 USD
What will you do?
Erin McDowell is a powerhouse baker and in May 2025, we’re lucky enough to have a second week in Toulouse with this visionary and gentle & good wunderkind! The Queen of the Sturdy Pie, Erin’s tricks of pastry will become your own by way of her confident and friendly teaching methods, which have gained her the overwhelming popularity she deserves in the baking world.
AND THEN 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, a short country drive west of Toulouse. Surrounded by a property extending more than 30 acres, you’ll be able to take a walk through the woods, the fields, or just hang out in the courtyard 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.
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While we hope everyone will participate, all experiences are optional! Please feel free to take time for yourself whenever you like.
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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.
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Eating and drinking are communal! You’ll have the opportunity to cook food, taste wines and learn from experienced teachers. We can’t wait to welcome you for our workshops!
YOUR guest host
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
SATURDAY 5.17.25
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
SUNDAY 5.18.25
On our second day, we’ll settle into the château for a day of baking. We’ll jump right in with filling our macaron shells, and then Erin will guide you in perfecting a true puff pastry. This may seem an intimidating pastry dough to take on, but with Erin’s technique and charm, you’ll be ready to repeat the process at home! We’ll fill in the gaps with lunch in the courtyard, cocktails by the pool, snack in the kitchen and a grand dinner in the dining hall.
DAY three
MONDAY 5.19.24
Monday means market day in town! After another tasty breakfast where we sample your Sunday puff pastry, we’ll head to the nearby town of Samatan to find fresh local fruits and cheeses and take in all the sights and smells of a true French market in the countryside. We’ll head back to the château for lunch, a lazy afternoon, and then a guided natural wine workshop with Virgil from Le Merle Moqueur, an incredible wine bar in the nearby village Auch.
DAY four
tuesday 5.20.25
If we’ve done it right by now, the Château will start to feel like a home away from home. Erin will guide you in a brioche exploration throughout the day, and in between checking on your dough and shaping it into buns, braids and beyond, you can enjoy dipping your toes in the pool, going for a walk in the woods, or checking out the fruit trees on the grounds of the Château de Labusquière. We know you’ll love this place as much as we do!!
DAY five
wednesday 5.21.25
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
thursday 5.22.25
Today, we depart from our home for the week and we soak up every last breath of the wide open air of the Gers region. 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. Our dear 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 in our small 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 - dare we 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 Monday 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 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
Airplane
Several planes fly direct to Toulouse Blagnac airport (TLS) every day from Paris and other cities around Europe. We will arrange for an airport pickup on the first day of the retreat at 11:00 a.m. , and we will drop you off on the last day at 11:00 am. All you have to do is get to Toulouse and we’ll take it from there!
*If you choose to arrive after our arranged pickup time or to leave earlier on the last day, we would be happy to help you arrange for a private driver for an additional fee.
*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!
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 cliffside city in 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! Please note that if you take the train to the Toulouse Matabiau train station, you will need to take a taxi to the Tououse Blagnac airport (20 minute drive) for our scheduled pickup time.
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 Classes 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 French Classes is the way! Check out their website for more information.