By Donna Thornton/News Editor
Competition will be hot – at least hot enough to bake biscuits – on Monday (April 7) at the Galleria McDonald’s in Hoover, as 11 of the best biscuit makers from McDonald’s restaurants in Alabama compete in the company’s annual biscuit bake-off.
Marcie Bozarth, one of the biscuit makers at the McDonald’s in Southside, is one of those in the semi-finals, competing for first, second and third prizes of $1,000, $500 and $250.
Bozarth said she’s worked at McDonald’s for about three and a half years. She said she made it into the biscuit bake-off after her supervisor, Brenda Potter surveyed the work of biscuit makers at the three stores owned by Rusty and Content Hamilton of Southside.
Bozarth and another biscuit maker from the Southside McDonald’s competed in a preliminary competition and she earned a trip to the semi-finals.
“We have to follow all the procedures – there are procedures for everything,” Bozarth said, in making the biscuits, not only at the competition, but at McDonald’s each morning, too. She reports for work at 4 a.m. (usually a little earlier) to make handmade, from-scratch buttermilk biscuits.
“But even following the procedures, everybody’s biscuits taste a little different,” Bozarth said. “With some you can taste the buttermilk a little more, or it’s a little lighter.”
Bozarth is excited, and a little nervous, she said, about the competition. “Even though I make biscuits all the time here, it’s different making them in front of everybody.
“Usually people don’t see much of the biscuit makers,” she said.
That’s because those biscuit makers are pretty busy. While the number of biscuits made each morning varies some, based on what specials are offered, Bozarth said they make between 14 and 25 pans of biscuits each day, with 15 biscuits to a pan. And the Southside store, she said, is not as busy for breakfast as some others.
Bozarth said she planned to come in at McDonald’s on an off-day to practice for the competition, not that she can’t bake biscuits elsewhere.
“I do make biscuits at home,” Bozarth said with a smile, “But I can’t make a cake.”