My experience is, that it is always better to start with as simple means as possible and avoid as much of the new and untried as possible. Then gradually add up everything needed.
Hardware IIC and SPI is much simpler that bit-bang.

Also, my credo is, nasty but working, rather than perfect and broken :-)
well, although not totally contradictory, mine is: "I do not care if it is working, if it is maintainable" That means that it is easy to make maintainable code work, it is impossible to fix "working" code that is not maintainable.

Erik