Why Must You Add Only One Egg at a Time When Baking?

Published on Wednesday, December 2, 2009, by Roxanne Webber / Edit Post

A lot of baking recipes say to add eggs “gradually” or “one at a time” to dough and batter. You add eggs slowly, just as you should with any wet ingredient, to allow them to mix in evenly, says James Peterson, author of Baking, particularly if the mixture contains butter. “If they’re added all at once, they won’t let themselves be worked in,” he says.

Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, explains that “almost all liquid ingredients are added gradually” so that they can emulsify with the fats in the mixture. She says eggs should be added one at a time to cookie dough, bread dough, and layer cake batter.

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  • Yet another 'baking rule' that I've never followed, and that hasn't affected my success in the kitchen...

  • (un oeuf)

  • The method was invented by the French because, in France, one egg is enough.

  • I think it originated when more of the eggs were bad and it was really important to break them into a small bowl and inspect them before using them. This avoided using a chicken. ;-)

  • I have found when I used to make things by hand, without my Kitchenaid mixer, it was an issue to add the eggs more than one at a time, but with the mixer, I have never had a problem adding two at a time. Of course, when in a big hotel kitchen, I was adding at least 6 eggs at a time. As long as you can get them mixed in evenly without over mixing, I've found one at a time doesn't matter much .

    ...+READ

    I have found when I used to make things by hand, without my Kitchenaid mixer, it was an issue to add the eggs more than one at a time, but with the mixer, I have never had a problem adding two at a time. Of course, when in a big hotel kitchen, I was adding at least 6 eggs at a time. As long as you can get them mixed in evenly without over mixing, I've found one at a time doesn't matter much .

    Also, regarding the fat interfering with the gluten, that part of the article was referring to alternating liquid (like milk or water) and the dry ingredients, not to how fast you add your eggs. The eggs have already been added by that point.-COLLAPSE

  • Also, it's nice to break the eggs into a ramekin 1st so that if you get a bad egg, it won't spoil the batch + it's easy to catch that stray shell

  • Thanks mcsheridan. I was playing the devil's advocate a little bit.

    This is just what I was looking for:

    "In baking, you want to avoid as much as possible the formation of gluten...The fat interferes with the formation of gluten...if you added all of the liquid ingredients first, you wouldn't get the benefit of the fat interfering with gluten formation."

  • I saw a more comprehensive answer here:
    http://www.kitchensavvy.com/journal/2009/01/adding-eggs-and-dry-ingredients-in-baking.html

  • “If they’re added all at once, they won’t let themselves be worked in.” ?? Is there a more scientific explanation of this? It just always seemed to me that by doing one at a time, you may make the process a little easier on yourself, but not that it's impossible to mix wet and dry ingredients evenly if you introduce all of the wet ingredients at once.