I actually develop everything in EF first, if we need to continue the project further, i'll integrate a DDD-pattern. If the app is going slow, i'll switch EF with Dapper. For Db hogs, i use Stored Procedures with the SqlQuery on the DataContext

Although many use nhibernate instead of EF, i have no experience with it... (it's more db agnostic though).

I'm not sure, but i wouldn't advice Linq To SQL though...