  We describe how the inclusion of the gluonic Polyakov loop incorporates large
gauge invariance and drastically modifies finite temperature calculations in
chiral quark models after color neutral states are singled out. This generates
an effective theory of quarks and Polyakov loops as basic degrees of freedom.
We find a strong suppression of finite temperature effects in hadronic
observables triggered by approximate triality conservation (Polyakov cooling),
so that while the center symmetry breaking is exponentially small with the
constituent quark mass, chiral symmetry restoration is exponentially small with
the pion mass. To illustrate the point we compute some low energy observables
at finite temperature and show that the finite temperature corrections to the
low energy coefficients are $N_c$ suppressed due to color average of the
Polyakov loop. Our analysis also shows how the phenomenology of chiral quark
models at finite temperature can be made compatible with the expectations of
chiral perturbation theory. The implications for the simultaneous center
symmetry breaking-chiral symmetry restoration phase transition are also
discussed.
