Sugar inhibits gluten development during dough mixing by competing with the flour for the recipe water, resulting in less tough and more crumbly biscuits. Commercially available Raftilose, which acts as an oligofructose and a sugar replacer was used in the recipes where the sugar was reduced by 20-30%. It was found that the sugar replacer did not exert the same hardening effect on the dough as the granulated sugar, therefore values for dough hardness were found to be lower than those obtained for the standard biscuit. Peak force values of the reduced sugar biscuits were found to be significantly lower than the control biscuit (P < 0.05), indicating a lower snapping characteristic, and therefore softer eating characteristics. Only those biscuits with the highest level of sugar replacement showed different surface colour attributes. At the lower and medium levels of sugar replacement, oligoftuctose can be used successfully to reduce sugar in short dough biscuits. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.