[Xajia]

Today while making bread, the first egg i cracked open had two yolks, I had never seen this before and wonder:

a) is this normal or ok?
b) does it count as 1 egg or 2?
c) was it a twin?

[RouxTheDay]

It's normal. Certain hens have a propensity to laying doubles, and it tends to be hereditary. There's a good chance your entire carton contains doubles. Generally, I'd still count it as one. If you compare a double to a single, you'll notice that each yolk in the double is significantly smaller than the one yolk in a single.

[DC Sunshine]

I love getting those double-yolkers. Don't often get them with supermarket eggs, but when I get them from the farmers market its not unusual at all. For volume's sake, they'd count as one egg, it'll just make your dish a tiny bit richer because of the extra yolk.

Dunno about the twin part - quite possibly it could be - but don't like the chances of them surviving in the one shell to hatching stage inside one egg shell, had they been fertilised. Maybe one would get survive and the other die off early.

Maybe someone else could give a better guess one that.

But don't stress - it's not a mutant egg

[siduri]

we used to get those all the time when i was a kid. I loved it. Now it's rare. In general, double-yolkers are bigger eggs (sometimes you can actually see from outside that they have a shell that is very slightly indented in the center) and so you would count it as a big egg, but i suppose they could be small too. If the recipe is one that requires super accuracy, you'd want to be sure you use the right size (small, medium, large, jumbo) but whether double or single would probably not make any difference at all. And for home baking, I'll say it again, it makes no difference - in all my years of baking i never had a problem using an egg slightly bigger or smaller than required. It's important to be precise in a bakery when you multiply your recipe, and an insignificant difference in size is multiplied by 20 or 30 or 100.

But, it's a waste to use a double yolker in a baked thing - they're so nice when you fry them sunny-side up.

[Pete]

As stated above, using a double yolked egg should not affect your recipe at all. As to the rarity, you don't often come across them in supermarket eggs (though it does happen), but I see it much more regularly in eggs bought from small farmers. As a kid it was always a "special treat" to get an egg with double yolks.

[Anneke]

My grocer sells boxes of double-yolk eggs. Takes the fun out of it when there's no mystery....

[Ishbel]

Same here in the UK, many supermarkets sell 'double-yolkers'.

[Mezzaluna]

Lou Mitchell's restaurant in Chicago serves only double-yolk eggs as I recall. Lou Mitchells Restaurant

My supermarket supplier had cartons of eggs with an average (in my experience) of three double-yolk eggs per carton for a while there. The only problem I see with them is it's harder to separate the yolks from the whites.

[deltadoc]

Originally Posted by Xajia

Today while making bread, the first egg i cracked open had two yolks, I had never seen this before and wonder:

c) was it a twin?

Just for information's sake, the yolk is the food sac. The gelatinous clear stuff is the chicken. I've never heard of two chickens hatching from one egg, but I'm not a poultry expert.

doc

[bughut]

Woo hoo! stick the toaster on - Mines easy over