The invention provides a method for producing grain-oriented silicon steel with single cold rolling, comprising: 1) smelting, refining and continuous casting to obtain a casting blank; 2) hot rolling; 3) normalization, i.e. normalizing annealing and cooling; 4) cold-rolling, i.e. single cold rolling at a cold rolling reduction rate of 75-92%; 5) decarburizing annealing at 780-880° C. for 80-350 s in a protective atmosphere having a due point of 40-80° C., wherein the total oxygen [0] in the surface of the decarburized sheet: 171/t≦[O]≦313/t (t represents the actual thickness of the steel sheet in mm), the amount of absorbed nitrogen: 2-10 ppm; 6) high temperature annealing, wherein the dew point of the protective atmosphere: 0-50° C., the temperature holding time at the first stage: 6-30 h, the amount of absorbed nitrogen during high-temperature annealing: 10-40 ppm; 7) hot-leveling annealing. The invention may control the primary recrystallization microstructure of steel sheet effectively by controlling the normalization process of hot rolled sheet to form sufficient favorable (Al, Si)N inclusions from nitrogen absorbed by slab during decarburizing annealing and low-temperature holding of high-temperature annealing, facilitating the generation of stable, perfect secondary recrystallization microstructure of the final products. In addition, the invention avoids the impact of nitridation using ammonia on the underlying layer in prior art, and thus the formation of a good glass film underlying layer is favored.