Wheat straw was pretreated with a thermomechanical process developed in our laboratory to improve the enzymatic hydrolysis extent of potentially fermentable sugars. This process involves subjecting the lignocellulosic biomass for a short time to saturated steam pressure, followed by an instantaneous decompression to vacuum at 5 kPa. Increasing of the heat induced by saturated steam result in intensive vapour formation in the capillary porous structure of the plant material and the subsequent release of the pressure to vacuum allows fixing the expanded structure. Response surface methodology (RSM) based on central composite design was used to optimize three independent variables of the pretreatment process: processing pressure (300-700 kPa), initial moisture contents of wheat straw (10-40%) and processing time (3-62 min). The process was optimised for hydrolysis yield and initial hydrolysis rate obtained by enzymatic hydrolysis on the pretreated solids by Celluclast (1.5 L). The analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that, among the process variables, processing pressure and processing time have the most significant effect on the hydrolysis yield and on initial rate of hydrolysis whereas initial moisture content observed significantly lower effect on the two responses. The predicted hydrolysis yield and in a lesser extent the predicted initial rate of hydrolysis agreed satisfactorily with the experimental values with R-2 of 96% and 86% respectively. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.