As many as you can get.

Stay consistent. Keep a schedule and build up your links over time. Don't rely too heavily on directory links. Remember that the harder a link is to get, the more valuable it usually is.

Casey got the definition of inbound links vs. # of linking domains right, so let me just add a couple of points.

If you look at correlation ranking factors, the number of linking root domains correlates higher to good rankings than the number of raw links. As our friend at Seattle Organic pointed out, it's much better to have 100 linking domains than 100 links from one site.

I wouldn't worry so much about the 1:1 ratio. That's a situation that will take care of itself as you build links.

Best of luck with your SEO!

The Google link; command is notoriously inaccurate, to the point of being worthless. Rand wrote a piece on it a couple years back.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-link-command-busting-the-myths

Unfortunately, as for manually checking for backlinks, your options are limited.

The good news is that OSE is getting much quicker at indexing new links. Other good ways of discovering links include checking your referring sites in Google Analytics. I could be wrong, but I believe this is the principal behind Linkstat.com

Moz is releasing a new update to Blogscape soon that should solve some of these problems. Majestic SEO sometimes has good backlink information.