We use the Schwinger-Dyson equations in the presence of a thermal bath, in order to study chiral-symmetry breaking in a system of massless Dirac fermions interacting through pseudo quantum electrodynamics, in (2 + 1) dimensions. We show that there is a critical temperature T-c, below which chiral symmetry is broken, and a corresponding mass gap is dynamically generated, provided the coupling is above a certain, temperature dependent, critical value alpha(c). The ratio between the energy gap and the critical temperature for this model is estimated to be 2 pi. These results are confirmed by analytical and numerical investigations of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the electron. In addition, we calculate the first finite-temperature corrections to the static Coulomb interaction. The relevance of this result in the realm of condensed matter systems, like graphene, is briefly discussed.