The typical feature of hot‐rolled sheets exhibits strong inhomogeneity in microstructure and texture along the thickness direction, and the latter can be named as texture gradient. Herein, the recrystallization and grain growth behaviors of the hot‐rolled sheet in a thin‐gauge nonoriented electrical steel are investigated at different normalization temperatures. The origin and the growth behavior of the main recrystallization texture {114}<481> are revealed. The results show that the texture gradient in hot‐rolled sheets leads to the difference in microstructure and texture between the surface layer and the central layer after normalization. The strong {114}<481> recrystallization texture originates in the orientation transition zone and the vicinity of the grain boundaries of deformed α‐fiber grains in the central layer of hot‐rolled sheets. The volume advantage of {114}<481> grains stem from the favorable growth environment caused by the low‐deformation stored energy, low orientation gradient, higher mobility of grain boundary, and size advantage to their surrounding deformation structure. In the final sheet, {100}<021> texture is the most vital texture, but {114}<481> grains exhibit a large volume fraction. As there are only 4–5 grains on average along the thickness direction of the final sheet, the texture gradient along the thickness direction no longer exists.

Due to the friction between rolls and sheet surface, shear texture inevitably occurs in the surface layer of the hot‐rolled sheets in electrical steel. The shear texture contains Goss texture {110}<001>, brass texture {110}<112>, and copper texture {112}<111>. The existence of shear texture and its corresponding microstructure affect the texture distribution in the subsequent normalized sheets, cold‐rolled sheets, and final sheets. Electron backscattered diffraction and reaction stress model are used herein to study the formation conditions of {112}<111> orientation in the hot‐rolled sheets. The results show that initial rotated cube orientation tends to rotate around transverse direction to the copper orientation during hot rolling due to the shear action. Different shear orientations can be formed in different regions of an initial coarse columnar grain during hot rolling, because of the change in surrounding environment reaction and the difference of the shear strain at different thickness positions. The thinner the hot‐rolled sheet is, the smaller the dynamic recrystallization region with shear orientation, and there is almost no copper texture in the thinnest hot‐rolled sheet. The simulation results show that the copper texture is easy to form under the action of σ23 and σ22 reaction stresses.