Played a bit with this once. To get avalanche gain you
will probably have to servo the photodiode bias to some
leakage level, below onset of avalanche breakdown.
This is probably cut-and-try unless you have a diode
that's popular for this application and well characterized.
Avalanche operation may need "quenching" after a
detect event, once initiated the same voltage that barely
made it leak will now multiply leakage big time. But for
a pulsed illumination, rather than "single photon" detect
applications you may not need to push so far into the
breakdown regime.