If you use code first it's very easy to get in a corrupted state where it doesn't know how to update the database. Otherwise it speeds up the basic tasks then it gets in your way to write more sophisticated queries.

I found that a good solution is to write a generic sql serialiser that does all the basic operations (insert, update, select, delete, read one or multiple from readers) and do the rest by hand. It avoids most of the tedious code/sql while not getting in your way to do things like transactions, bulk inserts, etc