Gluten plays a key role in determining the unique baking quality of wheat by conferring water absorption capacity, cohesivity, viscosity and elasticity of the dough. In spite of being relatively minor constituents, water-soluble pentosans (WSP) have the capacity to significantly affect the properties of dough and the final baked product. An understanding of their rheological properties in relation to their interaction would be therefore highly desirable in order to understand the physical and chemical mechanisms responsible for variations in bread making quality. Gluten and WSP were extracted from defatted whole wheat flour. Rheological behavior of the hydrated gluten-WSP samples was studied using creep-recovery test and dynamic measurements. For gluten samples, the dynamic moduli increased with the increase in NaCl concentration. The WSP had significant impact on this behavior, hence strengthening the network at any ionic strength, as shown by the increase of storage (G') and loss (G '') moduli. The gluten-WSP samples were most strengthened when water level was 50%, which was determined by creep tests and oscillating measurement. The gluten-WSP mixture was also less sensitive to the thermal treatment than the glutens alone, as shown by the lower magnitude of variation of G' and G '' with temperature. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.